Alice Cairns - Area Rep, joined 2018
Alice is STfL Area Rep in Sydenham, and for years has been Street Rep in her own road in Forest Hill. She was born and bred locally, in Blackheath. For seven years she lived in Hong Kong and China, where she started using the Chinese she read at uni. She is very aware of the kaleidoscope of perspectives she has experienced, and their advantages. “Life in China and Hong Kong presented a constant massive hinterland of new cultural attitudes towards everything - Nature, food, history and interpersonal relationships, unbelievable generosity and hospitality towards strangers. It showed me never to take for granted that I understand or am understood.”
“Until last year I was a journalist: ten years in newspapers and twenty with the BBC, the last ten working on the continuous news channel. It was a high-pressure job, working 24/7, 365 days a year. I travelled all over the place and met amazing people. I loved every minute, the sense of purpose, the responsibility of informing people about world changing events. Often, I was the one telling listeners live about a terrible natural disaster, an unexpected death, a surprise election result, a military invasion - or insurrection in Washington DC. I kept myself grounded by disappearing into Nature with my dogs, whenever I had a day-off.”
After studying part-time for RHS exams over the last few years Alice has just qualified as a garden-designer specialising in plants . “It’s a new world for me, a different pace, where the timelines and deadlines are measured not in hours but years. I love making gardens for people who so often want quite different and specific things e.g. for the planting to be luscious, or ordered, or something in between. I’m very inspired by the French garden designer Gilles Clément. Ages before it was fashionable he talked about wild meadow planting, allowing plants to do their thing, and jardins en mouvement. And of course, I love trees. They are my obsession. Every design starts with the trees.”
Alice met her French husband in China and has become a serious Francophile. “I am unbelievably proud now of being not only English but French - a citizen, not a subject! I love being French, they take everything seriously. They work to live not vice versa. It’s all about relationships, hobbies, habits, traditions, politics, and taking time to do things properly.”
Alice talks so fast it is hard, though a great pleasure, for your interviewer to keep up. She herself feels it may be time for her to slow down, to reflect, to take time, to learn to concentrate on one thing at a time. But I have a feeling she will keep busy. She was on her way to a play-date for her retrievers when we parted after our Sunday 9am breakfast interview in Hilly Fields.
Interview by Dom Eliot